


you are part of a machine, so you run on gasoline

by poeticaid



Series: Long Road to Success [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Confessions, Fever, Gen, Human K1-B0 (Dangan Ronpa), Is he still sane? or insane?, Memory Alteration, Murder, Nightmares, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 05:04:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17481728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticaid/pseuds/poeticaid
Summary: It shouldn't have come out of the other one's mouth, but the prisoner must've guessed that he was really curious, or put off at the prospect of having to watch a guy survive a show in Danganronpa. Only to be thrown to some prison cell like he had sold his life to Team Danganronpa."Are you still sane?"The green haired boy drops his food down to, thankfully, his plate which was still full of morsels to eat. He smiles eerily, grinning from ear to ear. "Sometimes, but I don't think so. I mean, IthinkI'm still sane, or, holding to a piece of my sanity, but, sometimes, I let lose once in a while. Like that time I strangled you. Or that masterpiece over your basement walls."He knudges his chained foot towards the masterpiece in the wall, which was still wet with blood. The blonde boy looks at the green haired boy's mangled fingers. He sighs lightly."I think I'm going to throw up."The chained prisoner smiles. "You should."





	you are part of a machine, so you run on gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> part of the LRTS AU, in Rantaro's perspective of events after Danganronpa 52 has come to a close.

He wakes up in a cold room, full of sweat. Who is he? Does he remember? He shrugs to himself, still dripping from his cold sweat. He swears to himself that he can remember who he is. There was a mirror in the room, and he can see his malnourished form. He blinks, and like a damn, all of his memories come back to him.

_Team Danganronpa._

_Fucking Team Danganronpa._

_Team Fucking Danganronpa._

_Team Dangan-fucking-Ronpa._

"I am Rantaro Amami", he whispers. He barely even heard his voice. He tries to remember his life outside Team Danganronpa, but the efforts were futile. "I am Rantaro Amami."

None of his memories resurfaced, and he had resumed to hugging himself. There was something wrong. He knows-though he doesn't know how he knows- that they usually get breaks between every chapter; what had happened?

"I am Rantaro Amami, I am Rantaro Amami, I am Rantaro Amami, I am Rantaro Amami, I am Rantaro Amami, I am-" He continues to repeat as he hugs himself. He spots a camera in the corner, and he feels anger surge over him that an audience was out there, witnessing the unbecoming of their hero.

He looks at the camera in defiance.

"I'm Rantaro Amami, and I'm dead."

* * *

He can't believe it.

How come he, Rantaro Amami, get to stay inside the building, chained up to a bedpost, while the protagonist and the rest of the _'survivors'_ get to go home free?

He was a useless character in the trials.

He was always accused of murder.

And why was he here?

_It's all fucking Shirogane's fault._

He wishes that that blue-haired bitch would walk right in front of him, so he can strangle her and watch her die in his own arms.

He looks at his hands, skinny as the rest of him.

_I am a pawn to a bigger event. I am already dead._

* * *

He doesn't want to be here, it was against his wishes. Not like Team Danganronpa cares, since he was a survivor. He should've killed _her_ when he had the chance. And he actually did have a chance, and it was a missed once.

He could've been a murderer. He feels the chain on his foot, reminding himself he was a personal slave here. Fuck them. Maybe he can't escape.

He can't escape to his own mind as well, as it was plagued with problems, nightmares, and visions. Also fuck them.

He wishes that he can touch the walls, reach them, and cry his heart out with his feelings. There was nothing he can do but contemplate what went wrong with his life.

Then another memory pops into his brain.

"Ouma", he mutters in his sleep. "Kokichi Ouma."

* * *

He starts to remember all the things that had happened before his life crumbled; when his life was all sunshine and rainbows (even if it _wasn't that happy_ , he still prefers it over staring into mind-numbing nothingness) and when he was still obsessed with Danganronpa.

His hands twitch.

He should really stop thinking about that show.

Then his mind drifts back to someone else in particular.

"Kokichi." He sighs as he lies back in the bed, feeling drained just from saying those particular words.

He drifts into his sleep, which were filled of memories in his time during Danganronpa.

* * *

He scratches and he writhes; whenever he was let out of his chains for just a second, maybe even a millisecond, all hell breaks lose down the basement. The blue haired, bespectacled girl was drinking her afternoon tea casually while listening to the maddening shouts of the prisoner in her basement.

It makes her feel as if her world was colliding with his own. She hears the shouts and cries of freedom, of sadness, and of madness, but she does not stir. She will never stir to do his bidding. It was her chance to be in the spotlight, and the sounds of anguished cries from a slowly maddening survivor will not change that.

After her tea on the porch was gone, she asks for her strongest guards to take her to the basement. They oblige, and she goes down the spiraling depths of her large home, to the place of agony to another. She does not open the door cautiously, and once she does, a boy her age lunges at her, but the guards successfully manage to immobilize the boy and chain him again to his bed post.

He stops screaming and crying, and trashing about, and the girl signals her guards to leave, and they did. She walks over to the boy, who was now focusing on her with those eyes. He smiles, a cold, welcoming one.

"Do you like my masterpiece over there, Shirogane?"

_Shirogane_ looks to where the chained man was looking, and she wasn't even surprised to see a message etched across the wall like it was scratched out, with tainted blood. She looks at his broken fingers.

"It's beautiful."

The green haired boy smiles lightly. "Why, thank you."

It read, _I exist._

* * *

He can't fucking believe it (for the umpteenth time).

That bitch got him a so-called _friend_ who acts formally and like a therapist pretending to be troubled with his problems, only it wasn't a therapist since he obviously does not have the experience and diploma to be one, and he was _her_ brother.

He already hated him the day he walks through the door. With his platinum blonde hair and metallic blue eyes, he looks like a robot- only he wasn't a robot. The boy looks at him, and the captive glares up.

"Who the fuck are you?", he asks.

"Kiibo", the boy replies, sitting next to him. "I want to see how you'll last. If you'll just... break infront of me for no good reason."

The prisoner's conscience breaks; his fears melt to the darkest parts of his mind, and all he can sense is how _humorous_ this situation is; he hates him so much.

His laughter echoes around the room, along with his mind's cries and pleas for freedom.

* * *

It shouldn't have come out of the other one's mouth, but the prisoner must've guessed that he was really curious, or put off at the prospect of having to watch a guy survive a show in Danganronpa. Only to be thrown to some prison cell like he had sold his life to Team Danganronpa.

"Are you still sane?"

The green haired boy drops his food down to, thankfully, his plate which was still full of morsels to eat. He smiles eerily, grinning from ear to ear. "Sometimes, but I don't think so. I mean, I _think_ I'm still sane, or, holding to a piece of my sanity, but, sometimes, I let lose once in a while. Like that time I strangled you. Or that masterpiece over your basement walls."

He nudges his chained foot towards the masterpiece in the wall, which was still wet with blood. The blonde boy looks at the green haired boy's mangled fingers. He sighs lightly.

"I think I'm going to throw up."

The chained prisoner smiles. "You should."

* * *

"Hello."

"Hello to you too."

Awkward silence ensues throughout the room, but by now, it was one of their daily routines. The prisoner's chains shcakle to the ground, and the so-called therapist sits across him, keeping distance. Like always. It seems he didn't forget about the whole strangling incident.

"I'm sorry I strangled you. Talk to me?"

"I'm already talking to you."

"You aren't."

"I am."

He looks over at the book the blonde was holding. Some sort of book about mythology, not like he cares about that. But he makes a grabby-hands motion, which was limited due to his shackles clinking all the way. Like an infant holding out to his mother. Kiibo looks at him in the eyes, with an unreadable expression. He raises a brow and casually slides the book across the room to him, and he catches it.

"Just read. I was going to go anyway."

The prisoner looks at him with a confused look. "But you just got here?"

His friend- his _only friend_ in this hellhole- just shrugs and stands. His heart hammers, wanting him to stay longer, and he reaches out and tries to stand, only for his damn shackles to fight him back and send him to the cold stone floor kneeling. He swears under his breath. When he looks up, the blonde haired boy was already at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. He was so fucking fast, he hates it.

He grits his teeth, trying to fight back, trying to break the shackles, even though he already knows that it was no use and there was no use fighting. Instead, he does the only thing he knows all the years.

He finally gives up and slumps on the bed frame as he hears the doors close behind him.

* * *

* * *

He didn't know what day it is, but it must be the fourth day he had gone without food. The blue haired bitch forced him to drink water, which he steadily refuses in the first day. He had felt death creeping over him in the second day, as he had licked his dry, cracked lips. He had a sore throat, and he feels light headed all the same. He was looking at the ceiling wistfully, waiting for death as he dehydrates and starves himself.

Then she _just had_ to make him drink water, even if it was a little sip, since he had been held tightly by the guards and he was screaming obscenities at her. He was drenched with sweat, and she had accidentally drenched him with water.

Which is how he ends up with a high fever the next two days. He was weak, and he feels numb, too numb to actually move and talk. He hears voices, but they were muffled. They seem to actually let him lie on the bed, rather than let him lean on it while sleeping, and they actually let him go from his shackles. He tries to move, to stand, but of course, his body works against him and he stifles a groan from alerting them.

That was when he _finally_ found out what they wanted to do with him. He was already aware that he was to be used in the next Danganronpa, he actually didn't know if they would wipe his memories away and replace his personality with something else, or let him run the whole simulation all by himself.

"He already sold his life to the show, Kiibo." The shrill voice that was Tsumugi's growled out. He personally scowls at that. So did the other surviving students, too.

"But seriously- we're going to let him in the simulation looking like _that?_ " Kiibo's reply was angry, but he doesn't know why.

"We'll let him heal himself until it's time to put him in the simulation with the others. I did you a favor, dear, you better return me one."

"By making me your personal camera man to the world? What the fuck Tsumugi? And I thought you were my sister, not some trigger-happy maniac."

"I must be the perfect mastermind in the show, Kiibo! I'll kill him off in the first chapter of the series, pin it to someone else... it's so damn easy! Bear with me! Dad wil be proud of m- us!"

_That was how he was going to die_ , he thinks bitterly. Rantaro Amami, the idiotic being in Danganronpa Fifty-Two... turned to a forgettable Chapter One Victim. He feels a smile climb across his face, but it fades when the siblings were done with their fight.

She leaves, leaving Kiibo and Rantaro there, and he closes his eyes, pretending to be sleeping. He hears a sigh, and a curse.

"I'm sorry", Kiibo says sadly. Rantaro muses if he knows he's pretending to sleep, but he doesn't respond.

Rantaro sucks in a breath, as the other walks away to follow his older sister. He didn't know why, but he's already in love with him, for some reason. Then he dismisses the thought, going back to his memories to find the description of Kokichi Ouma. And then it get torn with Kiibo's platinum blonde hair and steel blue eyes. He feels a tear slip by his cheek. Why must the universe hate him?

* * *

"Fuck you", Kiibo says as he manages to catch up with his sister, she grimaces as she looks back at her brother. "You've been keeping him there all month and you _want_ him to die early? What kind of waste is that?"

Tsumugi crosses her arms stubbornly. "He's already suffering."

"He wouldn't be suffering if you let him leave!"

"Fuck off, Kiibo, at least he'll be released early from the series." Kiibo was absolutely fuming, but he walks-or stomps- away angrily from his sister, punching a tree bark in the process.

* * *

The green haired boy, a few days after curing from his stupidly high fever was-unsurprisingly- locked in shackles again. He sighs, looking at the stone ceiling. Why can't they just let him die? He was a murderer in real life, his sister's life in his hands. He looks down at his shackles. During his ultimately high fever, he remembers killing his sister. He had a lot of sisters, but this one he was fond of. He bites his lip.

He can still see the crimson in his hands, his sister's blood. He remembers Kaede's look of horror as he wakes up from his nightmare, and looks down to see his sister's corpse.

She was Kaede's friend, too.

He puts his head to his knees, as he starts to cry, and ignores the basement's door opening, and the caring voice that likes to make him snap.

"I-If I hadn't tried _that_ o-out..." he sobs. "I still would've been with her."

"I'm sorry", Kiibo says, in that genuine, sorry voice that he had heard last week.

He lets the prisoner cry, in his shoulders and arms.

* * *

It was three weeks before the showing of Fifty-Three, and the Team Danganronpa staff has moved him back to the building, much to his chagrin and dismay. They then lock him in one of the dark rooms near the interview rooms, which were now being used. He remembered his interview, and he didn't know why it had influenced Team Danganronpa to include him to the series.

He still can't remember why he did it, though, since he was pretty sure Kokichi hates the show.

Does he still hate it?

There was a window near the room he was staying in, the dim light indicating the source of fact that indeed, he was near an interview room. He makes his way to the light, frightened and sick of the dark after many times he was left to fend in the dark. He was also breathing heavily when he finally places himself near the window. He stares down. _Now what?_

Then he perks his head up as he hears a door close and mutters were heard throughout the window. It was still dim, since the window's panes were painted black, which was fucking useless. He sneers. He can't wait for them to ruin their life. He contemplates whether to act like he knows what happens in the show, or pretends to be someone else entirely. He goes with the latter.

"So you're also here to audition huh?", he says. He hears a sharp intake of breath from the other side.

"Rantaro? Is that you?", a familiar voice asks.

His heart stops, as his mind processes everything he hears. It was _him._ The one he had left to fulfill his selfish dreams, to make himself the rich billionare he always wanted to be, even more so than his dad. Look what those fucking dreams got him now.

"Kokichi...?"

He hears a sharp sound, as if Kokichi was trying not to cry, and Rantaro feels guilty for causing so much pain for him. Why was he even here, in the very building he had loathed since the beginning of Danganronpa?

"I missed you", Kokichi says.

Rantaro feels obliged to smile, even if he can't see his best friend through the window. "Yeah. Me too."

Silence for a moment. No one was trying to save their conversation. The green haired boy bites his lip and speaks up again,

"Why are you going to audition for Danganronpa?" It had been burning in the back of his mind by now.

"Blackmail."

The green-haired boy's breath stops. He feels anger swelling inside him, and part of his instincts want him to break the window separating them both so he could hug the other boy, and kiss him. "Who the fuck blackmailed you?" He tries to sound calm, but he was gritting his teeth in anger. He hates humanity.

"People."

"Give me a clear answer, Kokichi."

"Give me a reason why, Rantaro."

"What kind of reason?" This conversation is so slow, Rantaro muses, as his heart beats, and his mind wanting to confess to him.

"Why you left everything behind."

Rantaro blinks, closing his mouth, wanting to give a clear, proper, answer. So instead, he starts to tap his mangled nails on the glass, thinking, pondering on why he had left his life behind to be in a show that encourages murdering people.

"Fame and fortune?" He finally replies to the hanging question. It was a half-assed answer, an answer devoid of an excuse he was a selfish asshole.

"Yeah, like everyone here."

Rantaro seems to agree, sadly. "Except for you."

"Yes, except for me", Kokichi affirms.

"Wow."

"Don't say 'wow' in front of me, Rantaro."

"And why is that?"

"Just don't."

Another silence. By now it was getting formulaic.

"Kokichi, I have something I wanted to tell you since I left for Danganronpa."

"What?"

"We've been friends since we were about three years old. You almost got ran over by our car when you were foolishly playing on the road."

Kokichi chuckles at that memory. Rantaro smiles sadly, since his memory was still fuzzy about the whole ordeal and everything else. "Yeah. So when you father almost ran me over, you attempted to stop the car. We started a friendship after that."

Rantaro feels tears slide downwards from his cheek, and he wipes it with the back of his hand to see that indeed, he was crying. His smile grows wide.

"Well, after I joined Danganronpa, I realized that I miss you so much." He starts to cry freely, and his brain finally supplies that he needs to tell him _now_.

"I... I always thought it was so clichè." He tries to force his feeling and memories of Kiibo away from him, to the darkest recesses of his mind, but it fails miserably as he remembers that time he became infatuated with Tsumugi's brother. He hated him.

"What's clichè?"

"Falling for your best friend."

Silence.

"Shocked, I know right?"

Kokichi laughs. "No, just processing everything you said."

"Are you really that slow?"

"Nope. Just satisfied."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I liked how you confessed to me in a clichè setting, to be honest."

"Aw, is that all?"

"And I love you too, you motherfucker."

"We would kiss if there wasn't a window blocking us." Rantaro taps the window with one of his fingernails, making him yelp. He keeps forgetting that he destroyed his own fingers because of all that scratching and writhing.

And yet, he wasn't satisfied with confessing to Kokichi. He was still satisfied, yes, but only partly. His mind wanders back to Kiibo, his blonde hair and blue eyes, that cold smile that looks like he was taunting you, analyzing him and himself, and his calm voice. It was hard to imagine him as Tsumugi's brother, especially when they look nothing and act alike.

And Kokichi was his childhood best friend, then crush, then whom he was in love with. He had never minded him, even after he confessed about how he hates Danganronpa. They had a fight, but still he forgave him. Rantaro doesn't know if he could forgive himself, especially when he was the reason why he was thrown into the interview room.

He sighs to himself, as he looks at the dark, meaningless ceiling, and he remembers the sound of Kiibo's voice and Kokichi's laugh as he starts to cry freely, but silently, to not attract attention from the other room.

"I'm sorry", it was barely a whisper.

* * *

_Rantaro Amami._

That was the only thing he remembers- from all the things he could remember. He can't even remember what his talent was, or why was he here? Would others go for him, since the killing game has begun? Or would they suspect him as the traitor or mastermind, due to his unknown talent?

He looks at his tablet, thinking it has the answers since he had recorded himself before his memories were seemingly erased.

_Survivor's Perk_... what even is that? Did he survive something? Like the end of the world?

And why does he feel like he _needs_ to go to the library?


End file.
